current demographics suggest future energy supplies will be inadequate to slow human population growth目前的人口统计显示未来的能源供应将减缓人口增长不足.pdfVIP

Current Demographics Suggest Future Energy Supplies Will Be Inadequate to Slow Human Population Growth 1 2 3,4 John P. DeLong *, Oskar Burger , Marcus J. Hamilton 1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America, 2 Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America, 3 Departments of Biology and Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America, 4 Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America Abstract Influential demographic projections suggest that the global human population will stabilize at about 9–10 billion people by mid-century. These projections rest on two fundamental assumptions. The first is that the energy needed to fuel development and the associated decline in fertility will keep pace with energy demand far into the future. The second is that the demographic transition is irreversible such that once countries start down the path to lower fertility they cannot reverse to higher fertility. Both of these assumptions are problematic and may have an effect on population projections. Here we examine these assumptions explicitly. Specifically, given the theoretical and empirical relation between energy-use and population growth rates, we ask how the availability of energy is likely to affect population growth through 2050. Using a cross-country data set, we show that human population growth rates are negatively related to per-capita energy consumption, with zero growth occurring at ,13 kW, suggesting that the global human population will stop growing only if individuals have access to this amount of power. Further, we find that current projec